From: TruthMonger <tm@dev.null>
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 13:00:08 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: [cpe:4563] Tim May's defensive racism (was: about RC9) (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199711180415.WAA20098@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <34711E65.9E2@dev.null>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Jim Choate, dipping into Hettinga and Young's drug stash, wrote:

> > From: TruthMonger <tm@dev.null>
> > Subject: Re: [cpe:4537]  Tim May's defensive racism (was: about RC9) 
> > > People who believe the spin doctorism 'The medium is the message' usualy
> > > spend their time watching television or working for it.
> >
> >   Those who *do*not* believe 'The medium is the message' usually think
> > that Socrates' world-veiw would have been exactly the same if he had
> > been using the InterNet as his means of viewing and communicating with
> > the world.
> 
> Who's Socrates?

  He's the guy who edited this post so that those reading it will be
very confused as to who said what...

> I know this, way down deep there is a fundamental dialog between people and
> all the technology in the world doesn't change that. Those base topics are
> what define human societies. If this weren't so then how can the human
> experience be so stable over recorded history & cultures? Why do we discuss
> the exact same sorts of questions all societies & individuals have asked?

  What you say is true, but the fact of the matter is that our current
misperceptions are defined by the medium through which we
miscommunicate.
  True communication goes beyond the medium it passes through, but is
nonetheless limited by the capacity of the medium to convey what we are
trying to express. (As well as by the capacity of our experience to
interpret what we are receiving via that medium.)

> But, to counter your suggestion, please be so kind as to demonstrate your
> evidence where the method of expression might have changed the basic
> fundamentals of his dialogue? What are those fundamental issues that you
> claim have changed so radicaly? While your'e at it, how about extrapolating
> that nifty keen cliological analysis to say 500 years into the future and
> explain your own biases and bigottries? You can leave the whip and chains
> out of the dialog, those never change.

  The whips and chains are the best part...
  The Eskimos have something like 30 different words for "snow." If you
or I want to 'talk snow' with an Eskimo, our "method of expression"
(language) will be affected by the "basic fundamentals" by which our
differing languages are constructed. If we filter these already obvious
differences through different medium of communiations (words, pictures,
ASCII characters, etc.), then the "fundamental issues" will "change
radically" according to the number and type of filters that our
communications are interpreted through.
  500 years from now, my own biases and bigottries will be revealed
by the stripping away of the current commonly understood methods
of misdirection by which I attempt to disguise them, as well as
disguised by the the future misunderstandings of the unique meaning
that my current commonly understood methods of communication convey
to those steeped in the the peculularities of our era.
  i.e. - People drunk on Scotch, 500 years in the future, will 
understand what I just said, whereas even I, myself, am unlikely
to understand it in the morning, once I sober up.

> I would propose...

  Thanks, but I don't go that way...

>  -  People are people, people are strange
> 
>  -  What makes one person happy is guaranteed to piss somebody else off
> 
>  -  Most people will never figure the first two out even if you tell
>     them the answers

  Young and Hettinga are going to be really pissed when they find out
that you've been dipping into their 'stash'...
 
> I'm beginning to think your attention span is tuned to those 30 second
> blip-verts...and who asked? Are the voices back already?

  Nope. I'm wearing the aluminum foil hat...
 
> >   Reality is that even when the medium evolves to the point where we
> > can use it to convey the totality of what we are trying to convey, that
> 
> "convey the totality"? What kind of double-speak bullshit is that?

  I was hoping that I could slip that one by you.
 
> Look junior, the absolutely *ONLY* way to express the 'totality' of an
> experience is to be the one doing the experience. You can pop all the
> moddies and daddies you wanna but it's still a pale imitation; a rose it is
> not in any language. Now unless you have just instantly warped our happy
> assess into the far flung future we are a long walk from plugging brains
> together, nic's & protocols not withstanding.

  Whoa! Sounds like you took a few too many of the 'red' ones...
 
> My suggestion, don't quit your day job, assuming your old enough to have a
> job. They can't tell you're a dawg on the Internet.

  I'm a 13 year-old dawg, and I'm not wearing any panties.
(91 in people-years.)

SaggingTitsMonger